Major General Sir Percy Cleghorn Stanley Hobart commander of 79th Armoured Division, who was made responsible in March 1943 for the development of specialised armoured vehicles, known as 'Hobart's Funnies', to spearhead the assault phase of the invasion
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It’s a tale that veers from Dad’s Army to the beaches of D-Day, but remains seldom told – the story of the great Major General Sir Percy Hobart; the man whose was brought out of retirement by an outraged Sir Winston Churchill; without whom Victory in Europe could have played out very differently, and who died 60 years ago this year with scant public recognition.

In 1940, the UK is at war with Germany. The threat of invasion and the Luftwaffe looms, and in tranquil, unassuming Chipping Campden, the so-called jewel of the Cotswolds, the surrounding rural idyll has been transformed into what has been described as ‘a bristling hedgehog’ of defence.

Leafy glades, rural roads, fields and woodland were customised by barbed wire and road blocks. The town – within unnerving proximity to Coventry and Birmingham - now constantly on the look-out for German parachutists and gliders.

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The Home Guard has been inspired by its new Corporal, the recently forcibly retired Major General Percy Hobart DSO, MC, munitions engineer and expert.

D-Day is June 6, 1944 the day of the Normandy landings initiating the Western Allied effort to liberate mainland Europe from Nazi occupation during World War II

Ironically, over the channel, the Germans were applying the expertise of the same man. As former commander of the world’s first permanent tank brigade, Percy Hobart’s revolutionary innovations in tank warfare had earned him international military fame.

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As the pioneer and developer of the Blitzkrieg technique, Percy was particularly well-known to the Germans who claimed the “lightning war” offensive as their own. As they used their armoured vehicles to create disorganisation to British troops and swept across the continent and through fallen France, it became clear that the Germans had been avid pupils of Percy’s expertise.

Under the terms of the Versailles Treaty, tanks had been forbidden to the Germans, but Heinz Guderian specifically applied himself to studying Percy’s inter-war innovations. When Hitler sanctioned the Wehrmacht’s new tank battalion, he later called on Guderian to command it.

But as the Germans used these innovations to devastating effect, Percy Hobart found himself unceremoniously forced out of the army and ousted from duty.

Since the early 1920’s when he first joined the Royal Tank Corps, Percy had continually championed the tank as the decisive land weapon of choice, going on to raise and train the 7th armoured division in North Africa.

As familiar as tank warfare may seem to us now, nearly one hundred years ago such pioneering of armoured warfare and futuristic vision was at best unorthodox, at worst bordering on heresy for the majority of the military, for whom mass-frontal infantry attacks seemed to present the only option, despite the butchery and failures of WWI.

Percy was adamant: "Why piddle about making porridge with artillery," he said, "and then send men to drown themselves in it for a hundred yards of No Man's Land? Tanks mean advances of miles at a time, not yards!'

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His insistence on the innovation of tanks still met with die-hard resistance. Every advance in technology, such as the installation of radio communication, had been hard won and battled for. Not only were Percy’s views unpopular, but his strong, argumentative character also set him at odds with some of his more conservative military contemporaries, and his personal life had ensured that some of his rank, more concerned with the social aspects (Percy’s wife Dorothy had previously been through the divorce courts) of the military than the fact that there was a war coming, took against him. The treatment of Percy Hobart at the outbreak of WW2 does not shower his detractors in any glory.

British troops landing on the beaches of Normandy, France

So, at the age of 55, he moved to the Cotswolds with his wife and daughter, relegated to the rank of Corporal in the Chipping Campden Home Guard, and swapping his black beret and for a simple armband.

His wife Dorothy later said “He was a stricken man. To anyone lacking his intense fortitude, the wound would have been mortal. No warning whatever was given that this blow was to fall."

But then, on August 11, 1940, things changed. New Prime Minister Winston Churchill, three months into the job and himself an early pioneer of the tank in the first world war, read an article in the Sunday paper entitled “We have wasted brains!”. The critical piece had been written by an outraged Capt B.H Liddell Hart, one of the country’s foremost military analysts and one of Percy’s faction. The page was dominated by a photograph of Percy, in the black beret of the Royal Tank Corps.

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The article hit the spot, propelling Churchill into action. Familiar with Percy’s work, he immediately put wheels in motion to launch a career resurrection that is unsurpassed in modern military history: Percy was invited to Chequers to meet the Prime Minister.

When Percy first returned to England, an appeal against his dismissal was made to the King, but the appeal was never put forward by the War Office. Meanwhile Guderian’s panzer tanks were perfecting the techniques first tried and tested by Percy. Only the miracle of Dunkirk saved the army from capture and annihilation, yet still the military conservatives remained unswayed. Even now, Churchill himself had to battle for Percy’s reinstatement.

As late as October 1940, Percy was still unemployed, his appointment obstructed high in the War Office. Churchill was given a dossier listing reasons why the progenitor of the Blitzkrieg should not be given an armoured division. He sent a blistering riposte:

“I was very pleased last week when you told me you proposed to give an armoured division to General Hobart. I think very highly of this officer, and I am not at all impressed by the prejudices against him in certain quarters. Such prejudices attach frequently to persons of strong personality and original view. In this case, General Hobart's views have been only too tragically borne out. The neglect by the General Staff even to devise proper patterns of tanks before the war has robbed us of all the fruits of this invention.

Library file picture showing Allied troops wading through the sea to the Normandy shore during the D-Day landing of June 1944

"These fruits have been reaped by the enemy, with terrible consequences. We should, therefore, remember that this was an officer who had the root of the matter in him, and also vision…We are now at war, fighting for our lives, and we cannot afford to confine Army appointments to officers who have excited no hostile comment in their career. The catalogue of General Hobart's qualities and defects might almost exactly be attributed to any of the great commanders of British history…This is a time to try men of force and vision, and not be confined exclusively to those who are judged thoroughly safe by conventional standards.”

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This did the trick. Soon back in uniform, Percy was given responsibility for raising and training the 11 Armoured Division, earmarked for service in North Africa against Rommel.

Yet still his detractors tried to stop him, and made a final attempt to oust him, this time on grounds of his health. As Rommel the Desert Fox stood at El Alamein, Churchill was enraged:

“I see nothing in these reports on General Hobart which would justify removing this officer from command of his division on its proceeding on active service.

“General Hobart bears a very high reputation, not only in the service, but in wide circles outside. He is a man of quite exceptional mental attainments… it is a great pity we do not have more of his like in the service. I have been shocked at the persecution to which he has been subjected. I am quite sure that if, when I had him transferred from a corporal in the Home Guard to the command of one of the new armoured divisions, I had insisted instead on his controlling the whole of the tank developments, with a seat on the Army Council, many of the grievous errors from which we have suffered would not have been committed.

“The high commands of the Army are not a club. It is my duty ... to make sure that exceptionally able men, even though not popular with their military contemporaries, are not prevented from giving their services to the Crown.

As it happened, Percy’s assignment to North Africa was cancelled. Having raised and trained the two finest armoured divisions, Percy faced a bigger challenge more in line with his unique talents than divisional command; the development of what became known as ‘Hobart’s funnies’.

The invasion and conquest of Europe required a new range of tanks and armoured vehicles, and Percy was the only man truly capable of their invention and innovation. Tanks were needed for clearing mine fields, throwing flames, bridging rivers and ditches, for destroying emplacements, crossing rivers and for swimming ashore from landing craft.

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The task was enormous, Percy would be playing to his strengths. This unit would become known as the 79th (Experimental) Armoured Division, both the biggest and first all-armoured division in the world. After consulting Capt Liddell-Hart, Percy took the job.

Field Marshal Montgomery, the conqueror of Rommel and hero of El Alamein, also happened to be Percy’s brother in law. He was also an admirer, playing a prominent role in introducing General Eisenhower to Percy’s work. Eisenhowe, impressed, ensured red tape was slashed to help chivvy along US manufacture of Percy’s odd so-called menagerie of funnies.

The proof of the pudding came at D-Day. By the time the Allies reached the Rhine, Hobart's 79th Division consisted of eight brigades and 17 regiments, with 1,900 armoured vehicles spread out over a ninety mile stretch of front.

Percy served until the final gun of the war. His support for armoured warfare had been proved. As General Eisenhower wrote:

“Apart from the factor of tactical surprise, the comparatively light casualties which we sustained on all beaches, except Omaha, were in large measure due to the success of the novel mechanical contrivances which we employed, and to the staggering moral and material effect of the mass of armour landed in the leading waves of the assault. It is doubtful if the assault forces could have firmly established themselves without the assistance of these weapons.”

Major General Sir Percy Hobart was knighted by King George VI, receiving the Legion of Merit and Degree of Commander from the US. To have ‘served with Hobo’ became a mark of distinction in the army. When Percy died in 1957 he was widely mourned, yet the incredible story of his resurrected career remained little known outside military circles.

The family moved away from the Cotswolds, but Chipping Campden’s loss had already become the Western World’s gain.

Championed by Churchill and General Eisenhower, as Capt Liddell-Hart went on to write: "He was one of the few soldiers I have known who could be rightly termed a military genius."